Celebrating Women’s History Month

Celebrating Women’s History Month, ironically, I found some inspiration in the form of the theatre performance “Becoming a Man.” It is a story of a woman’s body transitioning to a man’s body, how it could entail complications in relationships, friendships, mental health, and physical health, and how it is a life-death decision that is complex with heavyweight yet with hopeful possibility for the liberation in the future only when we are true to ourselves past and present.

Every month and every day, we celebrate our identities and the communities granted to us in solidarity with those identities – whether women, any gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality, etc. And they matter. They have an impact on our everyday lives.

I carefully ask, however, are we faithful to ourselves in celebrating our identities? Is any part of me being lost and let go? Which part of me is growing and enriching in those celebratory moments? Am I genuinely celebrating, or am I grieving? Is it okay to grieve and lament the loss of some of ourselves as we gain new possibilities and potentials in the present and the future?

Many of these complicated questions thrown out during the performance resonated deeply with me. Our body, soul, and heart are transitioning and changing significantly every day, every month, and every year for some mysterious and different reasons we cannot tell. We are ’transitioning’ uniquely, often, outside the boxes of “normality.” How do we name ourselves in those transitions? Do our names stay the same? Words have power and can be embodied – just as the Word became Flesh. In that sense, how do we name ourselves with authenticity, particularly in our relationship to God?

Celebrating Women’s History Month with genuine heart, soul, and body, along with all communities’ history with uniqueness, I carefully raise these questions. Not to erase anybody’s identity but to truly embrace who I am and who we are, as we are created in the image of God.